


The Forgetting room

by EternalSinner



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F!Byleth, F/F, Redemption, Romance, slight AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-01-23 16:24:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21323152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalSinner/pseuds/EternalSinner
Summary: Edelgard finds herself waking up in what seems to be the afterlife, complete with numerous fractured memories that shouldn't be able to exist simultaneously.Byleth is there to help her find herself and repair the broken timelines.Some things must be remembered, forgiven and understood.Sadly for Edelgard, Byleth is not all that good in being a comforting and wise guide, making things just that extra bit hard on Edelgard.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 5
Kudos: 28





	1. Consumed

I was a child when I met you,  
There between the autumn trees.  
You consumed me and I let you,  
Burn me in the fallen leaves.

The first thing Edelgard becomes aware of when she opens her eyes is the deep orange sky stretching out endlessly above her. The second thing is how she find it to be so utterly beautiful. She idly wonders why she took so little time to admire its beauty before. If she had to make a guess it seems to be early dusk as tints of orange and red are slowly draping over the fading blues like a comforting blanket. preparing itself for the darkest hours of a day. It’s still very light outside, however.

She lies like that for a while, contemplating the color of the sky. It's vastness and bright colors occupy every part of her brain and holds her full attention, perhaps she's feeling a little hazy, she vaguely thinks to herself.

Yet slowly bits of her consciousness are coming back to her and suddenly she's glaringly aware that she's awake. She's not sure how long she's been awake but she's just suddenly very confronted with the fact that she is and that she's been thinking about the sky for quite some time now. There shouldn’t be anything wrong with that in itself, right?

But then she considers that if she had been asleep surely the sky wouldn’t be the first thing she'd see. Perhaps a bit of it, with light pouring through an open window, but right now she's looking at the entire sky in all of its burning glory. She's lying on her back, she figures out as she continues to hazily stare upwards. It also occurs to her that dusk is not a normal time for her to wake up.

The rosy state that she was in begins to fade and the oddness and frankly, slightly distressing, aspects of the situation begin to dawn on her. Something seems to be wrong.

_Very_ wrong.

Something must have happened to her and she doesn't have the slightest idea what that could be.

Finally she attempts to move.

For the briefest of moments all Edelgard feels is a hellish, agonizing pain searing through several places inside her body. The immense pain makes her scream uncontrollably and impulsively she frantically grasps towards the sky with both hands, in some vague instinctive attempt to somehow escape the pain. Then, in an instant, before she can even fully become aware that she's screaming all the pain is gone as quickly as it came.

It didn’t even last long enough for her to be sure if it really happened.

Panting and for air, she lies still for several moments, too scared to move, too scared the pain will return if she does.

Along with the pain some memories seemed to have flashed through her mind, stills, echoes of _something, _yet it feels like a quickly fading dream. The images weren’t in her conscious long enough to permanently settle and now she's left with the distinct feeling something was there in her memories but now it’s out of her grasp. Gone, but not without leaving a trace in its wake.

It's frustrating.

After what seems like forever she slowly, carefully dares to move her arms, which were still motionlessly raised skyward, down again.

No pain.

She take a few more moments to calm herself down and tests other movements. Flexing her hands and feet feels fine. Tensing the muscles in her legs, stomach and shoulders comes without issue too.

Finally she dares to sit up, raising her knees to her chest, and she turns her head look around, taking in her surroundings.

She's in a small clearing, she notices. There’s nothing but soft moss and the faintest bits of grass underneath her body, but around her, in a perfect circle, plants have begun to grow. The ones closest to her are barely a few centimetres tall, but the further she looks the higher they seem to get, until they would be slightly higher than herself if she were to stand next to them.

She recognize the plants.

It’s… it’s corn?

Countless plants of half grown corn, the corn itself still small and covered in leaves, surround her completely.

What?

Why is she in a cornfield of all places?

She's been close to cornfields before, she thinks. Vague memories of her childhood cross her mind. She remembers riding past them in a carriage, marveling at how big the plants were and how the fields seemed endless. She recalls how she wished she could run through them, playing hide and seek with other children.

When she grew up there wasn’t much time to marvel at such things any longer.

Edelgard feels confused, a sensation she doesn't like one bit and has always tried very hard to avoid. But she just can't help but feel out of place in this field. At the same time something begins to gnaw at her memory. Something that has to do with her having falling asleep in the first place.

She tries remembering how she came to fall asleep and what led to her to deciding to sleep here of all places. Had she gotten lost? Had she been trying to flee from something? Someone?

Something seems to dawn on her, in the back of her mind. She grasps and tugs at it with all of her mental strength and the _something _that had been deftly eluding her abruptly floods her mind like a tidal wave.

As if struck by lightning the pain is back. It’s internal and external all at once and Edelgard wants to rip herself apart if only to stop the pain. It's everywhere. She grasps at her abdomen, clutching her stomach with desperation. It feels like… it feels like death.

Her heartbeat rings loudly in her ears as she recognizes the pain.

Or rather, _remembers _it.

_Thump thump._

She didn’t fall asleep.

_Thump thump._

She _died._

When she comes to this realization the pain instantly evaporates again. Instinctively she wraps her arms around herself and promptly tears well up in her eyes, despite how she roughly reminds herself how she had told herself over and over again how she had shed her last tears long ago.

But everything is simply too much right now. Too many feelings, too much pain.

She remembers her last moments, the memories right before the pain of death hit her.

In a single moment everything overcomes her at once, flooding her brain with nearly unbearable sensations.

_There’s Dimitri, he’s holding out his hand towards her, a gesture of peace, of forgiveness. She's bleeding heavily and trembling as she's kneeling on the floor before him. She isn't sure what she's thinking, but for a moment she sees herself smile, a small and peaceful smile, one in solemn resignation, accepting her fate, and instead of taking his hand she witnesses herself throw the dagger at him. Not to kill him, she thinks, but to make sure he kills her._

_And on impulse, he does just that._

_Thump thump._

_There’s Byleth and she’s slowly approaching the kneeling Edelgard who patiently awaits her well deserved judgment, a sorrowful expression on both her own face and that of Byleth. How did it come to this? Edelgard can hear herself talk but she cannot make out the words, the memories feel too far away, too blurry. It doesn't matter, she thinks she knows what she's saying anyway. She remembers the relief she felt when she knew it was finally over and that it would be her teacher, _Byleth, _who would be the one to bring her peace._

_She idly watches as Byleth takes out her sword and swings it at her. _

_Other memories overcome her. She turns into a black, charred monster in one of them, fear and hate and longing on her mind yet all logical thoughts seem to have faded from her. Still, her teacher is on her mind. She watches herself die several more times in all sorts of ways. She sees Hubert fall time and time again, and each time it hurts just the same. Sometimes her old classmates remain by her side and die along with her, sometimes they are the ones that strike her down instead._

_All the different memories sear through her in painfully bright flashes, swirling until they become a blur and Edelgard isn't sure where she is or even who she is anymore._

Finally she gasps, her lungs desperate for air.

Reality comes back to her and the memories are suddenly just that again, memories. A jumbled mess of tragedy, pain and loss which all seem to contradict each other.

She remembers everything else about herself as well, she realizes, from her early childhood up until she entered the academy. It’s after the latter event that things start becoming muddy, with multiple memories of the same event occurring differently and with different outcomes.

She shudders as the memories settle in her mind. But as traumatizing as they are, they also confuse her. Which one is real? Which one did she experience? Are they even really her memories at all?

Is she even still Edelgard?

The thought is horrifying.

Feverishly she begins to check her body, to see if maybe she looks different than the person she saw in those memories. But everything is the same, from the white hair she hates so much to the multiple scars she hates even more adorning her body, marking her forever as both failed and successful. For the first time she notices the clothes she's wearing. Usually she'd make sure to cover everything as to not show the scars, but now she's dressed in a simple white cotton tunic with short sleeves and an equally simple, loose and matching pants of the same fabric reaching to her knees. Also, no shoes. Even though it’s unlike something Edelgard would have ever worn voluntarily she thinks it somewhat suits her, finding comfort in its simplicity.

Perhaps in another life, she considers. One where she had never been forced to become Emperor.

She wonders if she's really dead then, and if this is some sort of afterlife.

It's a bit more... empty and mundane than she'd expected.

She finds she fiercely wishes to talk to someone, anyone who can help her clarify as to what happened, or what she's supposed to do.

Anything to soothe the sense of dread steadily rising in her chest that she's here completely and utterly _alone. _She absolutely needs someone to talk to.

No. Not just someone. She realizes she wants to talk to Byleth.

An odd thought at first.

But she would have the answers, Edelgard just knows it. And even if she didn’t Edelgard would just really like to talk with her again, she thinks. It's been so long, and Edelgard feels that in all her scrambled memories she never got to talk to Byleth as much as she wanted to. Not about the things that mattered, and not about the things she would have wanted to talk about with her teacher for her own enjoyment either.

The memories are shuffled and mashed together, but they all end with the same thing, her death. Surely her waking up like this in this strange place must have some sort meaning, a purpose.

She takes some time to regain her senses, becoming more aware of her body and letting strength flow back into it. When she feels ready she carefully gets up, she can’t see much however. There’s just corn in every direction she looks. 

She's stuck in a full circle of endless corn.

Everything around her is the same.

Except.

Something faint pulses in her mind, nudges and tugs at her brain, or perhaps her heart. She'snot sure, she tried getting rid of her heart many times in the past, she thought that perhaps she had finally succeeded.

Whatever it is, it draws her towards a specific direction.

In what is probably one of the least thought out and most impulsive decisions she's ever made, she begins to make her way towards the direction the feeling is pulling her.

It could be danger. It could be a trap. She considers all the risks.

Then again, she's already stuck in a trap. A trap of endless corn.

The corn is sparse enough that she can somewhat easily walk through, only having to brush some plants aside with both her legs and arms. She can see ahead reasonably far, but as she continues to walk all you see is more of the damnable plants.

She continues for what feels like minutes doing this.

In the back of her mind she feels a faint fear grasp at her. What if this is all there is? She wonders if it’s some kind of punishment. Quickly she forces the thought aside, unable to cope with the sudden spike of panic rising in her chest and and determinedly she pushes on, focusing all her thoughts of moving forward, of finding something, anything at all.

Several more minutes pass by.

It feels like an eternity. She has to force herself to stay calm.

To do so she focuses on her breathing. In and out, deep and at slow intervals.

Suddenly she become aware of a smell entering her nostrils. It smells… good? Her brain registers it as food at the very least. Something is cooking. She feels her heartbeat quicken.

If something is cooking that means someone is close.

She rushes on inadvertently increasing her pace, her bare feet moving against the grassy ground and her hands feverishly brushing the leaves and stems of the half grown corn plants aside.

It doesn’t take long before she begins to see something through the leaves. A large dark shape looms through the leafage. When she's close enough and part of the shape towers over the plants she recognizes it as the roof of a wooden house.

Her pace slows down and she takes her final few steps, finally breaking through the edge of the corn forest.

She's in a clearing, a small field with a wooden cabin in the middle. It’s surrounded by grass and flowers and bushes with berries in them. A path reaches from the entrance of the house, over a large pond, into the woods on the other side. The cornfield only circles about half of the clearing, she notice, the rest is made up of trees, bushes and, to Edelgard's relief, other plants. Plants that aren't _endless corn. _

Something moving in the corner of her eyes catches Edelgard's attention and when she focus her vision on the movement she gasps.

There, in front of the cabin is _her._

She looks the same as usual, messy dark green hair and an aloof expression on her face. She’s not wearing her usual garments but rather something similar to her, a slightly shapelier and darker tunic with simple pants. She’s cooking in a pot.

Cooking, so mundane, so normal. It grounds Edelgard and some clarity returns to her mind, so addled by anxiety, panic and confusion.

“Professor…” she breathes out, keenly aware her voice is barely working.

She wasn't sure if she was anywhere loud enough for her teacher to hear her but not a second later the woman leisurely turns around from her cooking pot anyway.

Byleth doesn’t seem all that surprised to see her, instead a small but genuine smile settles on her features.

“Edelgard,” she says warmly and with perhaps a tad of mystery in her voice. Edelgard's heart promptly does something funny when she hears her name coming from those lips once again. She's suddenly aware she sorely missed that familiar voice.

Apparently her heart hasn't been dead after all. As for the rest of Edelgard however... that seems to be another question entirely.

“I was expecting you,” her professor continues, sounding as if she's simply late for class. Edelgard's world spins and brightens and momentarily she finds herself back in those old times, in that short, wonderful gap in time Edelgard had found and cherished so deeply, where she had experienced true peace for the first time in her life. As a student, laughing with classmates, finding scarce moments to idle around in those halcyon days which didn't last nearly long enough.

It's all too much to handle.

And promptly her world tumbles.


	2. The two beings too low on the grand scale of things.

“I was expecting you,” her professor says calmly, sounding as if Edelgard is simply late for class. She feels a vague tug at her heart and realizes she missed the feeling.

It takes the white haired young woman several moments to regain her senses as so many memories of her time as a student rush back into her mind along with a feeling of warm nostalgia running so deep that it hurts.

Her professor (or former professor? Enemy? She doesn’t know anymore. Still, it feels natural to call her professor.) doesn’t seem impressed or worried at all by her ragged breathing, pale face and the way she’s clutching the fabric around her chest tightly with her fist.

Only when Edelgard realizes she isn’t actually feeling any pain in her chest and not all that out of breath either does she find it in herself to regain her composure somewhat.

“Expecting me?” she questions tentatively, her voice shrill and unsteady as she feels too out of her depth to act like she feels even remotely in control.

“Well, yes,” Byleth hums nonchalantly. “There are only so many places to travel to around here… not counting all the corn,” she mutters, sounding slightly dissatisfied about the corn part.

Edelgard feels relieved by how Byleth too seems rather disgruntled by the frankly excessive amount of corn in such an odd place. “And either way,” Byleth continues. “I could sense you when you appeared here, so I assumed you could sense me as well. I simply concluded that if you’d find yourself surrounded by endless plants of corn and nothing else of interest whatsoever you’d eventually opt to follow the tug in your mind leading you to me,” she explains casually, as if it all sounds perfectly logical.

“Of course,” Edelgard says rather flatly, making a great effort to stop herself from rubbing her temple with her hand out of frustration. “Yes, the endless corn, this odd place… the fact we can apparently _sense_ each other’s presence?” She sighs exasperatedly. “Makes perfect sense,” she says as dryly as possible.

Byleth merely grins at her. “In here it does, yes,” she says, somehow sounding more mysterious than this entire place Edelgard has found herself stuck in.

She groans, her patience dwindling much quicker than usual, courtesy of all the stress and emotional turmoil she’s been through in the short time she has found herself here.

“My teacher,” she tries saying calmly, in the more commanding tone she grew to wield as Emperor. Instead she feels she only sounds impatient and crude. “You seem to know more than me, could you please find it in yourself to kindly explain to me where we are?” She had hoped to sound more imposing, more in control of the situation, but she’s pretty sure she still sounds clueless and uncertain.

It just makes her more frustrated. She hates this feeling of having no control over the situation.

Her former teacher graces her with a polite smile and only the hint of genuine, if somewhat distant, warmth in it keeps Edelgard from losing even more self-control and snapping at her.

Patience, she tells herself. Just be patient.

“I can explain some things, yes,” Byleth says. “And I will, don’t worry.” Her eyes turn distant for a moment, as if her mind is occupied with something, before she quickly focuses on Edelgard again. “But I’m afraid even I don’t know everything, you might end up feeling disappointed,” she says, slightly more serious and somewhat apologetic.

With that she turns back to the pot that’s still being heated by the fire and stirs into it with a large spoon. “Stew,” she says, looking over her shoulder at Edelgard, who now truly feels close to snapping.

Byleth seems to notice her wavering sanity and take some pity on her. “Before I tell you what I know could you please tell me what you remember? From before being here, I mean. It will make things much clearer for me as well. Speed things up and all.”

“I remember all of it, my whole life, all of me,” Edelgard says without thinking, she doesn’t need to, she just knows. “Most of it is… normal but after a certain point my memories become fractured, splintered. Different things happening in the same place at the same times, with different outcomes. My mind is filled with fragments of a multitude of scenario’s that shouldn’t possibly be able to co-exist.”

“And why is that?” Byleth asks her, momentarily forgetting her stew and glancing intently, calculatingly at Edelgard.

“Because I die in all of them, in so many different ways,” Edelgard breathes out and feels a tremor course through her body, the memory of dying making her mind reel. “And not just me, you as well professor, and others too. Sometimes as friends, other times as enemies. …Nothing makes sense.”

“Hmm, so what did you conclude?”

“Conclude?” Edelgard considers it. “I thought that perhaps one of those memories is the truth, what really happened to me.”

“And then what would the rest be?” Byleth questions her as if it’s important knowledge for an upcoming exam.

Edelgard finds it hard to come up with a clear answer to that, some kind of answer she can believe in herself. “Lies? Dreams? Illusions or some kind of trick?” she tries.

Byleth doesn’t seem satisfied with her answer and looks at her unconvinced, Edelgard finds she doesn’t really believe it herself either.

Sure they could all be possible answers… but _why? _She can’t think of a plausible reason for her to wake up with countless fractured memories with only a single one of them being true.

She gasps as she considers another possibility.

“They’re all true?” she asks tentatively, equally afraid of both possible answers as she is to how Byleth will judge her answer. She shouldn’t care about such things anymore, it’s been years. Still she does, still she wants her approval.

To both her relief and dread, Byleth gives her an approving smile. “Time is a fickle thing,” she hums with that air of secrecy Edelgard is very much _not _enjoying. “And sometimes there is an… occurrence in the normally so linear passage of time that splinters it. This isn’t always a cause for concern, but in your case it kept splintering, never putting itself back on track, never mending itself… and from what I’ve heard it, uh, well it got real bad. Someone kept going back in time over time and over again in an attempt to reach a certain outcome but now it has been officially concluded that such an outcome is impossible.”

It’s a lot to take in for Edelgard, who until now had never thought of time as anything but singular, linear and mercilessly unstoppable. To think someone had been deliberately fracturing it to try and reach an outcome they considered favorable. The sheer arrogance. You alter fate by fighting it head on, not by simply restarting time like it’s some kind of chess game with infinite tries.

“Why? What was so important that someone would do something like that?”

“You.”

“_What?_” she sputters, blinking rapidly. “Excuse me? What did I do to cause this?”

Byleth shrugs. “Dying, apparently.” Her eyes drift away once more and for a moment they turn hard, forlorn. Almost as if she’s in pain. “Among other things,” she murmurs quietly, her voice distant.

Dying. Edelgard died. _Many _times as well. Over and over again. Yet, right now they all feel like far away memories. As if they are things that happened years ago and while they might still have a lingering impact on her mind… she feels no such thing as an immediate aftermath, a trauma she has to go through unless she makes an effort to focus on a single memory. Instead all those flashes of her multitude of deaths now feel like a part of her that’s been with her long enough she considers it normal, just another memory from a long time ago.

Still, it hardly makes sense. Is she part of some kind of pre-ordained fate or something? Was she required to live to see that fate come to fruition? Was her death something that wasn’t allowed to happen? She cannot imagine it, she went to war against the Goddess and her Children, what reason would they, or anything that controls fate, have for keeping her alive –or worse for them, winning the war against them.

“I fail to see how my death fractured time,” she tells Byleth plainly, even somewhat defensively. Who blames someone for dying? For being killed, no less.

There are many things she feels people have the right to blame her for, but dying isn’t one of them. She could even argue she died with praiseworthy dignity and respect towards for the victors in most fragments.

“It wasn’t your death that caused time to fracture and rewind,” Byleth states and there is now a distinct edge in her voice, it even seems she has momentarily forgotten her stew. “Rather, it was how someone couldn’t cope with your death, and so committed themselves to try over and over again to find a way to save you, to remain by your side, until their very soul became as fractured as the timeline itself.”

Byleth glances away from Edelgard, her eyes lost in the endless field of corn. Her eyes are cold, weary, and somehow incredibly old.

“Professor, I don’t understand,” Edelgard stammers. “Surely my life couldn’t have been worth fracturing ones soul over. Even without me Fodlan would continue to exist, the war would have ended and perhaps even some of my visions for the future would have made it into reality. At the very least it wouldn’t have ended the world.”

She might have left a deep mark on Fodlan but she’s certain it will recover, even prosper over time, until she’s all but forgotten. It’s a comforting thought, somehow.

“It wasn’t about Fodlan, nor its future, Edelgard. That person was very selfish and only cared about you, if it would have helped keeping you safe and at peace they would have gladly torn away the very fabric of reality itself to ensure that.”

Without warning her eyes find Edelgard’s own and she feels herself nailed to the ground, so piercing and full of fire are Byleth’s eyes. As if they see straight through her and then some more.

“That person was me, Edelgard.”

Some of the fierceness fades from her professor’s eyes and she deflates slightly. It’s with a hint of shame when she speaks up again. “I fractured the timeline, and unknowingly fractured myself in the process.”

Edelgard feels the blood drain from her face, her mind riddled with conflict, confusion and feelings she can’t even begin to place. She remembers talking fondly with Byleth, she remembers her own heart flutter occasionally when the other woman would say something particular interesting or grace her with one of her rare smiles.

She had cared for her dear professor.

She had budding feelings for her professor, several memories tell her she was clearly aware of that. A small but deceptively strong part of her had desperately wanted to let those feelings bloom, to let herself fall in love.

But she also recalls how she smothered those feelings each and every time, along with everything else she had held dear in her heart, to ensure she was the emotionless, hardened weapon she needed to be for the war.

So how could it have happened then that between the two of them _Byleth _turned out to be the one to act on feelings for her? Feelings which should have been barely there to begin with, especially as they wound up on opposing sides of a war.

A hollow laugh startles Edelgard from her thoughts. She finds Byleth looking at her and despite her youthful appearance she somehow looks so old.

“Here is where it gets tricky,” she explains, and some life and her peculiar sort of amusement returns to her. “I always had a connection to the Goddess, her soul was tied to mine, but let’s not dwell on that for now. Hmm, you have memories of where my hair changed, right?” she asks curiously.

Edelgard has to swallow before she can answer. “Yes, many times. After you fused with her, correct?”

“Exactly,” Byleth all but exclaims, momentarily sounding uncannily similar to how she’d sound while teaching Edelgard and her classmates. “When that happened Sothis sacrificed a tiny part of her soul and it became a permanent part of me.”

Byleth suddenly looks as if she recalls something important and promptly turns her back to Edelgard to hunch over her stew once more, showering it with her attention and care.

And Edelgard truly thinks she might lose it if the professor keeps prioritizing her damn stew over explaining just what is going on, because it seems very complicated and very important.

“Anyway,” Byleth continues, still stirring the food. “Sothis is an entirely different sort of being than we are, and indeed a mighty Goddess, so her consciousness exists on an different plane of existence than this one, or the one Fodlan is on, meaning she isn’t here nor there and I can’t communicate with her any longer.” She stills momentarily and a wistful sigh escapes her lips, seemingly lost in a memory.

She abruptly turns her waist and head around, looking at Edelgard once more without any sign of sadness. “That aside, I still possessed that part of her soul and that left me with the ability to return back to a fixed point in time. Which I did, over and over again until I had inadvertently shredded my soul to pieces, along with time itself.” She turns to look somewhat sheepish. “I never realized I was doing either of those things, honestly. And I’m confident Sothis didn’t mean to grant me that ability either.”

Byleth laughs at something only she seems to be aware of and finally fully turns around fully more, choosing to sit on the ground, her legs crossed. “But while I might not have been aware of what I was doing down there, some of the, uh… higher-ups that reside among these realms very much were, and are now very much upset with me.” She tries to look guilty but the hint of a grin ruins her good intentions.

“So they willed me into existence, created me with all the memories of the Byleth down below and then had the _never _to tell me I was to blame and now am responsible to fix the broken timelines.”

Her words hit Edelgard in a way that makes her uncomfortable. “So you are not actually Byleth then? Or even human? Just a being that has access to her memories?” It’s a conflicting thought and she feels a flicker of coldness lap at the warmth she felt when talking to her professor before. Was it –she?- some kind of divine being masquerading as Byleth?

Byleth, or this sort of Byleth, stares at her blankly, all her amusement gone from her face. Then her brows furrow and her eyes darken. Edelgard would have called her expression anger but no… it’s… oh she’s offended.

“No, I am very much Byleth,” she says quietly, her voice cold and thin. Edelgard has to suppress a shiver. “You could even say I am _more _Byleth than the one running around on Fodlan has ever been. The way she experienced each timeline was cumulative, chronological, if only to her. One after the other they gradually build in her memories. …And in the end she started losing sight of the many timelines she went through. Her memories got fragmented, she lost chunks of many of them, others got blurry and she even started mixing different ones in her head. It fractured her as she did to time.”

She looks at Edelgard with intent, her eyes muted but fierce, as if she’s something much more wise than Edelgard could ever hope to be. “In contrast to her, I possess all her memories of all timelines at once, with clarity and down to the last detail.” Her voice holds a weight to it that makes her feel… ancient in a way. It’s still unnerving to Edelgard, who feels so small and vulnerable underneath that scrutinizing gaze her defensiveness acts up.

“But that’s exactly my point,” she argues stubbornly. “You have an unfair advantage over her, she was human but you are… I don’t know, something magical, perhaps even divine. And you are going to meddle with her memories and life. Do you even have that right? Do you even truly understand what she was feeling, why she did those things, if all you can do is silently judge her actions from above.”

She can immediately tell she hit a nerve, went too far in all likelihood, as Byleth looks at her with a sudden rage. It’s subdued and muted, exactly like the Byleth she knew would do, but it’s there. Edelgard knows she made a mistake, that she was cruel, but she hates this feeling of powerlessness, of not understanding what’s going on. She wants to be in control of the situation and instead she feels as if fate is toying with her.

“I do not just have her memories, Edelgard,” Byleth says thinly. “I also possess her feelings, her personality, her dreams and all of the agony _you _have caused her.”

Edelgard winces at the pain and accusation at the end of Byleth’s words, and she feels her cheeks redden in guilt, along with anger for being talked to so harshly but she swallows that down.

Besides,” Byleth speaks up again, suddenly sounding much lighter and Edelgard notices that even her anger is gone. “How are you any different?”

“What do you mean?”

“You _also _possess the memories of all the different Edelgard’s across time,” she points out to Edelgard. “So, which of them is really you? Or can you even really call yourself Edelgard, instead of merely a walking collection of the many different Edelgard’s there have been?”

The question arises a flicker of doubt in Edelgard but it lasts only a moment, her feelings are clear to her on this matter. “No, I _am _Edelgard, I feel that with every fiber of my being. No matter how many memories are planted inside me, at my core I will always be _me._” She says it with more ferocity than she intended, but having to defend your humanity and your validity as an individual is something that simply stirs strong feelings in you.

“Exactly,” Byleth says, sounding slightly victorious. “Who you are at your core won’t change. You could even argue that you are the true Edelgard, the ultimate being that arose from all the much smaller fragments of you that have existed.”

Byleth gives her a knowing, almost smug look.

“Just like I am.”

Edelgard bites her lip, her pride struggling to let her admit. Still, she resigns, the prospect of offending Byleth even further is very unappealing. “My apologies,” she mutters. “It was a confusing and conflicting topic for me and I acted out in a way that didn’t do you justice.” She hesitates a moment, struggling to say the rest. “I was rude,” she finally says.

“Very rude,” Byleth agrees rather bluntly and looking annoyingly satisfied.

“…Very rude,” Edelgard repeats tentatively, unable to keep the stiffness out of her voice.

Byleth grins, clearly pleased and Edelgard has to keep herself from making an annoyed sound.

Instead she gives Byleth a questioning look, some things still troubling her mind. “Still, my teacher," she says, now comfortable again with calling her by that title. “I cannot help but feel that compared to me you are something… more. Wiser, more powerful, as if you have a better understanding of all of this, of this strange world,” she says, trying to put things delicately.

“I suppose I have to admit you have a point,” Byleth responds. “You could say I am all of Byleth but with a little extra added to her, some sort of depth. It makes sense though, after all I am to be something akin to your guide you,” she smiles and suddenly her expression softens, looking at Edelgard with such fondness she feels her heart skip a beat. “A teacher, of some sorts,” Byleth adds wistfully. “So it would be helpful if actually had anything to teach you, or at least have an inking to what I am supposed to doing,” she smiles sheepishly. “I’d be a bit useless otherwise, no?”

“Oh, well that is a comforting thought then,” Edelgard mumbles. The hint of warm nostalgia isn’t lost on her either. “So what _are _we supposed to be doing exactly, then?” she questions.

To her dismay Byleth shrugs.

“See, those higher-ups, I do not even know what else to call them, they find it difficult to communicate with me in a clear way. I’m… too low on the scale of things or something. And in turn I cannot perceive them, they are… incomprehensible to me. Looking at them is like that feeling of knowing you had a dream but you can feel the memory of it fleeting from your mind quicker than you can recall it. I can’t even call it ‘looking at them’ really. I don’t think they have a physical form, or at least not one I can comprehend.”

Edelgard swallows hard, her throat try. Imagining such a thing is deeply unnerving, as if she didn’t already feel small and insignificant enough in this strange place.

“So it’s vague,” Byleth continues, seemingly unbothered by it all. “They told me if nothing is done the numerous timelines that now exist because of me will become messy in the grand scale of things. Something about parallel universes that might accidently cross into each other or timelines that fade into nothingness where the world becomes a dead zone… frankly I cannot fully grasp such things myself.”

A shrill and slightly uncomfortable laugh escapes Edelgard’s lips. “Hearing you say that is more of a relief to me than I’m willing to admit,” she admits feebly, finding herself completely overwhelmed by… well, everything really.

Byleth nods in understanding. “It’s a lot to take in, even with my slight advantage of having gained some divinity it’s still all very vague to me,” she hums.

Edelgard watches Byleth make a dismissive gesture, as if the topic is no longer of any relevance to her for the time being. _Sure, _she thinks to herself, just brush of silly concepts such as the existence of an afterlife, beings so divine we cannot perceive them and multiple timelines like it’s something so ordinary that it’s not worth dwelling on.

“Shouldn’t you take this a bit more seriously?” she asks, more out of her nerves catching up to her than accusation.

Byleth seems to consider her question. “We’re human, Edelgard. No matter what or where we are. And we can only comprehend things in a human way. I’m not going to bother wracking my brain and despair over things beyond my ability to understand.”

She says it so easily, as if it truly doesn’t bother her. Edelgard wants to argue, to insist the current situation requires a bit more dedication. But she knew herself to be overly meticulous when it came to… anything, ever. Always worrying, working out everything to the last detail, getting to the bottom of every mystery, even if it was just a rumor. It was exhausting and stressful, yet Edelgard desperately needed to be in control, too terrified to be controlled by other forces if she didn’t.

And Byleth had always been the opposite of that. She’d only focus on things that ended up on her path instead of searching for problems hiding in the shadows. She never prepared herself for hypothetical problems that might –or might not- arise in the future, and instead seemed to trust herself enough that she’d be able to deal with a problem only once it happened.

It’s soothing in a way, that someone has enough confidence that things will be alright somehow, and Edelgard feels some of the tension coiling in her stomach dissipate.

Sadly, Byleth had neglected to explain some of the more crucial details of their predicament until now, which she suddenly seems to recall as her eyes light up with intent.

“Ah, well. To make a long and needlessly complicated story short, we are now in the realm of purgatory and this small world is of my own creation, where it’s now up to me to help you reconcile with your feeligns, make amends and come to terms with yourself before you’re being judged.”

“_Judged?” _Edelgard echoes distressed and nervously, suddenly very alarmed by the turn of events. Every single word Byleth uttered before the ‘judged’ was already unnerving and way too much to take in at once but… being judged? Oh, Goddess anything but that. She always harsly judged her own actions, she didn’t need other people –_beings- _to do so for her as well.

Byleth nods again, seemingly not caring very much about Edelgard’s rapidly approaching panic attack. “Yes, judged,” she confirms. “The senate of the high Council of… whatever they call themselves will ultimately judge if there is a timeline suitable for you to re-enter, and if so at what point, so that time can merge once more, along with my broken human self. If not, you’re being send to your respective afterlife for good.”

Edelgard feels herself go light-head, struck with panic and the overwhelming feeling she has gotten herself into something daunting and incredibly complicated while she doesn’t have the slightest idea what she’s supposed to do, and apparently neither does Byleth.

What even counts as ‘successful’ in this scenario? Does she even want to be forced back into her own life at whatever point will be deemed suitable, likely to live out the exact same life and still end up killed for ideals she couldn’t make real. She loathes the thought, she already died in vain enough times.

Then what about moving on to the afterlife? Edelgard never gave what such an afterlife could pertain much thought, instead forcing herself to focus on controlling every aspect of her actual life, and after she rose her axe to the Goddess and her Children she had assumed that wherever she ended after death, it wouldn’t be one of the good places, if they didn’t straight up erase her soul out of sheer spite at her arrogance.

And then there is this Byleth, who is both exactly as Edelgard remembers her yet also a completely new person, and not just because of her newly acquired divinity and knowledge of life after death.

It’s all too much for Edelgard to cope.

And with desperate need she feels her whole life now circles around this strange Byleth, her understanding of this strange place, her reasons for being her, what she even is supposed to do, what sort of thing she will be judged on.

Only Byleth knows.

…If Byleth knows.

The thought is unnerving to say the least.

She doesn’t like it. She’s used to be the one wielding power and authority, to be in control of the situation and leave matters in the capable hands of people who were skilled and knew what they were doing. But now she feels forced to place her trust in Byleth, who seems to know more about whatever she’s currently cooking than what she’s supposed to do here, and also much more invested in it.

Then it occurs to her that Byleth seems to be perfectly at ease, seemingly having casually been preparing dinner until Edelgard arrived as if it was the most normal thing to do. Byleth seemed to belong here, blending in with the surroundings. Even if Byleth seemingly couldn’t put it into words very well, the world made sense to her. It wasn’t until Edelgard started to talk to her that she seemed to be caught off guard, emotional and even somewhat troubled by their mutual problem.

Yes, all of Byleth’s unusual erratic and cryptic behavior was a result of the way she had interacted with Edelgard.

“Professor?” she asks timidly, now having resigned to the fact she’s helpless without Byleth and pretending to be in control and calm is no longer of any use.

When Byleth glances at her, open, curious, she continues. “I…I have _many _questions, as you hopefully understand,” she says, a weak smile tugging on her lips.

Byleth laughs quietly. “I expected nothing less, I will answer them and help you as much as my knowledge pertains me to, but take it at ease.” The reassurance in both her words and tone do help Edelgard feel somewhat at ease, yet it has nothing to do with her first and most pressing question.

“Thank you, my teacher. I trust you will, as you did so before.” Before she can let herself be affected by the pang of nostalgia she steadily continues. “But the first thing I wanted to know is, well… are you angry with me?”

Saying it out loud made her realize how terrified she is of the answer and with dread she stares hard at her former professor. She didn’t think she could still be so affected by what Byleth thought of her, yet here she was, trembling at the idea of her old teacher being angry with her.

Byleth seems momentarily taken aback by her question, turning to look puzzled, conflicted even. Finally she seems to relax a little, exhaling softly.

“You must understand,” she begins, choosing her words carefully, “that I’ve seen you in so many different ways, across so many different times that it’s difficult to feel only one way about you. I know what you can be and I know how far you are willing to go to reach your goals, sacrificing everything you have.” For an instant pain flickers over her features. “Even yourself,” she all but whispers.”

“I won’t deny that,” Edelgard responds earnestly, it’s exposing and uncomfortable but if she is here to be judged for her actions she might as well start by acknowledging what she did. “All of it was never about me, it was for the future, for what I believed in. That was something bigger than myself.”

Byleth smiles at that. “That determination and your refusal to back away from hardships, that’s something I always admired in you, even if it often crossed straight into fierce stubbornness.”

Edelgard’s eyes widen at the insult and she scoffs.

“But no, I’m not angry with you,” Byleth continues, now sounding serious, genuine.

Then something akin to anger does settle in her features, with sudden tension in her jaw and Edelgard notices how she clenches her fists. “The first time I was,” Byleth confesses, her voice strained, as if she’s forcing herself to remain calm. “I… we spend a whole year together, Edelgard. I cared for you, I _trusted _you. I thought you valued me as well when you seemed to open up to me, that you trusted me as well.” She exhales shakily, her eyes filled with emotion, hidden and deep, but definitely there. “But then out of nowhere you turned on me, betrayed me.” She shakes her head stiffly. “No, you betrayed us all, and while I understood you did so out of some sort of determination and commitment to fight for a future you believed in, yet one which utterly confounded me, what I couldn’t understand is how you never even gave me the chance to remain by your side.” Emotion is bleeding into her voice now, despite her efforts to force it out.

Edelgard remembers that timeline, she thinks. Fragments of it, the important moments. Revealing herself as having been the Flame Emperor in the holy tomb, hearing Lady Rhea order the professor to kill her. She remembers having done so many times, but she thinks she can make out which of them is the first time it happened.

She recalls the hesitation in her then so beloved professors eyes and her faltering movements as she stared at Edelgard in disbelief, her eyes so piercing it had made Edelgard feel like she might as well have given up completely altogether right there.

That hesitation in her teacher’s eyes had been the last time she had the flames of love she felt for her teacher flickering inside her to come alight, before permanently snuffing them out as Hubert whisked her away to safety.

The memory is clear, unlike several other occurrences of the same event, they’re blurry and feel as if she’s looking at them to a window of thick colored stained glass, the sounds muffled and the images distorted. There are just too many similar memories to see them all separately and clearly, side by side.

She feels something empty deep inside herself.

Had there been a possibility that Byleth would have chosen her side, had Edelgard given her the chance? She had considered it many times over yet always chalked it up to idle wishing and her budding feelings trying to addle her rational mind with pretty fantasies. Hubert hadn’t want to hear of it either.

It had been too great of a risk to their plans, too dangerous to even give hints to the professor of their true motives to see how she’d respond, before it was too late and it all tumbled down.

But now the idea of Byleth choosing to join her floods her mind as she fully lets herself imagine such a thing happening for the first time in her life –in her many lives. It’s unexpectedly painful and she feels her chest tighten as her breathing turns shallow and ragged. Why does she feel so many things?

A strong tremor runs through her spine and with a start she realizes she’s under such emotional turmoil she’s threatening to lose her balance as her legs are wobbling dangerously underneath her. She has just enough time to realize she has also began to cry when suddenly her legs do give out and she feels herself tumble.

Instead of falling however, she feels two arms wrap around her waist and steady her. Unused to being touched in any manner of kindness, the sensation startles her and promptly she bursts into tears.

As if it’s natural for Byleth she presses Edelgard’s smaller body against hers. Edelgard’s first impulse is to fight it, to get away. She feels trapped, she’s in danger and prone.

It feels as if she’s in a fight once more, having to desperatley struggle with all her might for her survival.

But she’s too tired, both physically and mentally, and the warmth of Byleth’s body seeping through her clothes gives her a feeling of comfort she didn’t know she had been longing for so much. So instead of struggling she remains stiff and motionless, not moving a muscle until she finds the courage within herself to lean her head on Byleth’s shoulder while she tentatively grabs her tunic at the small of the other woman’s back.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out between tears, her words barely comprehensible through her crying. It’s unlike her to apologize, she doesn’t make mistakes. And if she did she made amends, made sure she’d fix the damage. She doesn’t even know what she’s apologizing for. That initial betrayal? Losing her balance just now? Crying? The countless other fragments inside her mind where she causes Byleth pain, fought her, all scrambled inside her and out of order?

She doesn’t know, but she can’t help but want to apologize. “I’m so sorry, professor,” she sobs again, feeling useless because her lack to say any actual meaningful words.

“Shhh,” Byleth soothes her, not at all sounding upset. “I was angry then, yes. And hurt, and confused. I felt as I had failed you somehow, as if I hadn’t been enough.” Edelgard feels a tremor run through Byleth’s body and the other woman stills for a moment, when she finally does continue her voice is unsteady, trembling even.

“Then at the end, when you were defeated and kneeling before me, asking me to end you, telling me you too had wished I could somehow have remained by your side it felt as if it had failed you yet another time, that I was too late, as if too much damage had been done to salvage anything. So I ended it, ended you.”

Edelgard feels Byleth’s hands come to rest on her shoulders and she gently pushes her away a little so she can meet her eyes. “I never had a good grasp on my feelings, especially in the beginning. Both acting on them and identifying them didn’t come to me naturally, but I did feel them. And only after you died did I recognize all the pain and guilt and loss I had been feeling, so when I realized I could go back, could do it all over again, I did so without hesitation because I was convinced that this time I knew what I was feeling and what I had to do.”

Byleth laughs softly, seemingly amused with the foolishness of her past self. It’s a lighthearted laugh although the subject seems hardly lighthearted for either of them. “As you can guess I wasn’t successful the second time either, or the time after… and none of the many others that have followed.”

An almost sly grin tugs on her lips. “While I haven’t been angry with you in a long time Edelgard, uhm… all the higher-ups around here are very, _very _angry with me. They’re not evil or anything, but to them the life of a single human simply holds no relevance to them at all. They care about timelines, universes, those big kind of matters, those which I don’t care about in the slightest,” she laughs and seemingly dismisses the very concepts and instead a guilty smile settles on her lips. “Honestly, the fact that a single human has caused them this much trouble baffles them, it almost makes me feel proud. But they don’t care whatsoever about what happens to either of us, as long as whatever happens in here, what we can achieve together will somehow fix time and make it stable again.”

Only when Edelgard feels herself smile, a clueless and exasperated smile but a smile nonetheless, does she realizes her crying has subsided. “A daunting task, no doubt. But my teacher,” she says weakly but already feeling lighter than moments earlier. “I must confess though that I have no clue how to do such a thing, what are they expecting of us? Of me?” she asks, stuck somewhere in desperation and amusement at the sheer absurdness of it all.

Much to her dismay Byleth promptly laughs sheepishly. “A very reasonable question, and one I cannot really answer myself,” she confesses with an apologetic grin.

Edelgard feels herself pale once more, not very comfortable with this mysterious Byleth with all her secrets and unnervingly cryptic explanations such as ‘higher-ups’ having no clue what they’re supposed to be doing, especially if Edelgard’s very soul is at stake.

Her former professor notices her desperation and seems to take pity on her. “I mean I have a hunch, I suppose,” she says reassuringly.

It’s not at all reassuring for Edelgard.

“A hunch,” she repeats flatly, not masking her disappointment one bit.

“Hmm,” Byleth hums in acknowledgement. “A vague direction of sorts.” Promptly she lets go of Edelgard’s shoulders, grabbing one of her hands instead and tugging her along as she makes her way over to the stew she had apparently not forgotten after all. “Either way, it’s not important for now, we have plenty of time. Let’s at least have dinner first, I’m getting rather hungry.”

Byleth gestures for Edelgard to sit down on a nearby chair, one next to a small table and another chair, while she fetches some bowls and cutlery.

She does so reluctantly, the sudden change in topic catching her off-guard.

Eating is the last thing on Edelgard’s mind right now but it’s apparently much higher on the list when it comes to her body, as she suddenly realizes she’s indeed very hungry.

“You said we have time?” she asks when Byleth comes over with two bowls of a peculiar but not unappealing looking stew.

“Hmm, we do.”

“How much?” she asks tentatively. “Is there some kind of deadline? An ultimatum of sorts?” It’s a frightening thought, the prospect of having to deal with the pressure of time as an enemy while she struggles to find out what it is she has to do.

Byleth merely shakes her head. “No,” she says nonchalantly. “Nothing changes here until we do, so nothing will happen until we… happen.”

Ah, naturally, Edelgard thinks to herself, sarcasm now her only remaining sane friend. A world where the passage of time moves along at the pace of the progression of its inhabitants. Makes perfect sense.

Honestly, it somewhat does. Nothing here seems to make sense so this strange world might as well abide by completely different rules than what she took for a fact in Fodlan.

She decides to grant herself some peace of mind for the time being, Byleth seems to have done the same either way, having already begun eating, and so she settles with focusing on things that do still make sense to Edelgard.

Like eating.

She can’t help but chuckle as she delicately inspects the contents of the stew with her spoon.

At least there seems to be no trace of that damnable corn in there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When ur dead and your soul is going to be judged by God knows what kind of incomprehensible, cryptic, reality warping beings but your guide to help you is shitty and utterly useless and not making this any easier.  
Also it's her fault you're stuck her in the first place.
> 
> As for the corn, the image of endlessly outstretching fields of tall vegetable plants seems to carry a hint of the afterlife to me. I vaguely based it on the ending of Portal 2, where Chell is released from the testing facility and finds herself in a seemingly endless field of wheat. (which is somewhat bleak, as there is no water and you can't really eat raw wheat)   
Also getting yourself into mazes of corn irl is 10/10 experience and would recommend. Did so several times, once in one a farmer hard personally mowed a gigantic maze into, complete with wooden vantage points and stuff. You feel so small, corn plants are very tall.
> 
> Corn is absolutely disgusting to eat though. 0/10, not considered edible.

**Author's Note:**

> Just wanted to give them a chance to sit down with the full knowledge of the war so they can talk and reconcile. Consider the Crimson Flower ending not having happened in this story, at least in terms of what Edelgard remembers for now.  
Hope you enjoy it!


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